Freedom's Just Another Word

We laud free elections in formerly totalitarian nations, but, like a lot of what's free, fresh air and the like, we've learned to devalue the product
By Anna Quindlen

Newsweek
Oct. 18 issue - We introduced the Australian exchange students to Honey Nut Cheerios. They introduced us to compulsory voting. In class, they'd heard about the woeful turnout in American elections. "But aren't people concerned about paying the fine?" one of them asked.

It turns out that the laid-back country in which our two curious, self-possessed and intelligent houseguests live requires its citizens to vote. Really requires it. If you don't show up at your polling place on Election Day, you are asked to provide an excuse in writing afterward. "The dingo ate my ballot" will not do. Unless you have a good explanation—a heart attack that morning, say—you are fined. The result is that Australia has one of the highest voter-turnout rates in the world, around 90 percent.

Lest we forget, only 51 percent of all voting-age Americans bothered to show up in the last presidential election, which means that while Australia may be a forcible democracy, we are barely a participatory one. (Unless you count participating in opining without action, an event at which Americans would win the gold medal if it ever became part of the Olympics.) Which makes me wonder: Why don't we adopt the compulsory system the Aussies have embraced so successfully? And, on a lesser note, how come you can't get Honey Nut Cheerios in Sydney?

Almost by magic, I feel a hostile horde behind my desk, the many Americans who have made it their life's work to champion reckless abandon masquerading as liberty. Their causes may vary, but the motto is unwavering: "Wanna make me?" That's why some states have been persuaded to weaken their seat-belt laws. That's why there are motorcycle enthusiasts who make the right to ride without a helmet sound like Rosa Parks's moving to the front of the bus. That's why there are all those smokers who complain about the gulag outside the office-building door.
No facts can convince the rugged individualists hellbent on emphysema or spinal injuries. Some 13,000 lives are saved each year because of seat belts. A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study last year showed that the severity and mortality of motorcycle accidents shot up when helmet laws were repealed. There have been studies on secondhand smoke and its link to such spread-the-death ailments as childhood asthma. Personally, I'm just happy to be able to taste my food in restaurants and not go home with my hair smelling like that classic fragrance, Philip Morris's Eau de Fleur Tabac.

The argument is that you should be allowed to put your own body in harm's way if you choose. (The fact that the collateral damage and the costs for the catastrophes and long-term care are spread around among the rest of us is conveniently overlooked.) But forgoing the vote is an injury to the body politic, and that's not a personal matter. Low voter turnouts hurt everyone because they erode the notion of government by the people and for the people; when we complain that big corporations and paid lobbyists have taken over politics, we should remember that nature abhors a vacuum. In fact it's astonishing that we've blithely allowed Americans to drop out of the electoral process for so long. There's no argument about this: when we make an act optional, we inevitably suggest that it's not that important.

There's been a real registration boom recently, with election boards in many states being forced to hire additional workers and schedule lots of overtime. As deadlines loomed, there were tsunamis of paper across the country. Philadelphia had its biggest jump in new registrations in 21 years. "Almost to an April 15, IRS post-office type of operation," the elections director in Columbus, Ohio, told a reporter about the atmosphere at his office.

Some credit the work of registration groups like the ones spearheaded by hip-hop artists or pro wrestlers; others think voters were galvanized by how tight the 2000 race turned out to be, reversing the traditional cynicism about the value of a single vote. But almost everyone who studies voting patterns cautions: just because many have registered does not guarantee that many will actually go to the polls on Nov. 2. Sad, but true: the United States has not had 60 percent of its voting-age citizens turn out since 1968. And 60 percent is not exactly a high-water mark.

What's the price of freedom? How about a fine of 50 bucks? I like to be left alone as much as the next person, but there's no point in continuing to be high and mighty about being the cradle of liberty if it's just empty rhetoric. We laud free elections in formerly totalitarian nations, but, like a lot of what's free, fresh air and ocean water and the like, we've learned to devalue the product. Democracy without participation is like a house with two walls: it just doesn't stand up. Maybe our lackluster voting record means we're not really interested in all that anymore, that our new message to the world might be something simpler and more modern: we make a slamming sugared cereal!
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.